After Iris was assaulted in the originals, no one but her professor believed her, so Crane helped her in the end. Dr. Long (the dean of GSU from BTAS) did not believe either of them, leaving Crane on his own. Helped her take her revenge. ;) You would never believe the depravity of how she handled the main ringleader of the jocks - but this time is a certain blonde bitch from earlier. I felt everything as though it was myself that I wanted to make Vytina proud right here with Iris' revenge.

Chapter Six

Dark Obsession

8 years ago…

Five days. Five days since that terrible night. Fourteen-year-old Iris could still feel everything as they maimed, mauled, and scarred her worse than her mother could ever do to her….

She was almost fifteen, and this happened to her just before then. She was able to live with the pushing and shoving and verbal taunts…but this crossed the line.

Professor Crane had been around her more often since then. He was being more…protective of her since the incident. He had helped her report it the next day, but Dr. Long took the word of the fools over her, the victim. Crane even defended her, but Long threatened his position if this went uglier than it already was. Both he and Iris knew better as they did all along - no one would have believed her anyway. This was just like it had been with their families: No one would help them. They were all on their own.

But not as long as they had each other.

His words remained from that day of the reporting. "They will not get away with their crimes against a beautiful, bright, gifted young one like you, Iris, I assure you of that. The time will come sooner than either you or they think."

The mid-October wind brushed against her face and sent chills down her spine. Her dark navy V-neck sweater and sanded dark blue boot flare denims didn't do much protection either, and neither did the clutching of her book to her chest. No one of the group from that night even encountered her again - yet - but she had to get to Professor Crane's office fast. Besides sharing her dorm with Alice, his office was the only other place she ever felt safe.

The door was left open for her - to her, it was strange, for Professor Crane had never done that before. She hesitantly pushed it open and slipped inside, closing the door behind her as she looked around. "Professor Crane?" she called anxiously. "Are you here?"

"He is not present at the time, Miss DeLaine. He has left me to substitute." She jumped and turned to see the figure sitting at the desk where her teacher always resided. The figure in the pressed gray suit of her professor, the crisp white collar shirt, and the vivid tie mingled with various blue tones - light blue, like his eyes, dark blue like her sweater, and a darker, more poisonous sapphire like her own eyes - and sitting behind the rich mahogany L-shaped desk straight and poised…the head covered with what resembled a potato sack hideously stitched, two holes cut for the eyes, and the stitched mouth turned down at the corners…that rasping voice that was not Jonathan Crane's…

"Who are you?" Iris asked, keeping herself composed. And then it hit her, not something he told her himself, but what she recalled from her class. "Scarecrow…"

He chuckled. "You have scored high honors. You are finally meeting the other side of your dear professor. You might be...frightened of me now, but I trust you will grow quite fond? I know more about the study of fear as well as your teacher." He stood from behind his desk and walked her way, his polished shoes making soft clicks on the floor with each step. "He promised you the time came to give the fools who maimed you the lesson they will never forget, beginning with one. I trust you want to hear their screams after so long a wait." The moment he was before her and towered over her, he reached behind her to lock the door, not to frighten her with the fact that he would do something to her, to betray her after everything they'd been through, but to keep whoever else from coming in.

She stared up into his masked face, in particular the holes that showed two icy blues - his eyes. Her knees wobbled, threatening to give way beneath her. A feeling she had been developing since day one when they first met was returning. "Please take me to the first," she whispered, the dark side she knew she had finally slowly coming out, mingled with trepidation and fear beneath its excited surface.

Those eyes blinked behind the mask before leaning forward to study her closely. "I will make sure this will be a moment you hold with immense clarity for the remainder of your days, child. I am his wilder, stronger side he never lets loose except on the best of occasions. Now is one of them."

It dawned on her that his ravaged childhood prompted the birth of a second personality…the Scarecrow. No wonder he was so fascinated with fear, with the darker mysteries of the human mind. But it didn't change her perception of him.

"The start of your revenge will also be your first lesson in instilling fear. I'll be your tour guide through the museum of the human mind." His hand had taken hers and began to lead the way forward, away from the door.

Iris was surprised by the sight she saw, but she only gasped - she was not the sort to cry out - at her surroundings. Professor Crane - or rather, Scarecrow - had installed a secret room behind his bookcase similar to that of a horror movie when the mad scientist hid his secret lab behind a bookcase or an abandoned room below the farthest reaches. Here she met mostly darkness, but not complete darkness for the sunlamp over the metal operating table in the middle of the room. Tables filled with assorted bubbling chemicals and test tubes and beakers stanched the air with their various aromas.

Scarecrow's voice hissed seductively in her ear as he gestured to the struggling creature strapped to the metal table. "You do remember her, do you not?"

"Mina Rosenberg."

"Correct you are. No one can ever forget the everyday taunts commonly from her above anyone else in this university - it was she moreso than the others who did you harm. Who can ever forget that? Just as who can forget the pain you felt and bestowed upon your poor teacher when you came to him, and I watched from the canals of his mind as he tended to your injuries and held you by the fire, telling you the stories of his dark past not at all different from yours - and how he will never be like his own professor who betrayed him in the end? How he promised you that your retribution would come...and now it has. And he has let ME loose to be the one for the first step."

He chuckled against the mouth of his mask as he leaned down; at the same time, Iris turned to look up at him, her body thrumming with his words as she wanted to get this over with, but then she might not have the time to savor any minute of it. "Now that I have given you all the information you need, tell me what you want of this whore."

"I want to break this bitch," she answered, the foul word for a woman sweet on her tongue, and it made him laugh darkly at her lack of shame. "This filthy WHORE who humiliated me long enough. I want to give her the pain she gave me, turn the tides on her and make her scream for mercy I won't give. I'll give her a taste of her fears."

He handed her a syringe filled with a clear yellow liquid. She looked up again to see the cruel seduction and darkness in his eyes. "Then do the honors, my dear goddess."

She stepped forward and sneered at the girl who looked up at her with such hatred because she was younger and thought she was smarter - and she was. Mina was in a buttercup-colored dress - happiness, but also for fear. Ironic, Iris thought with her sneer still in place as she towered over the older girl whose lip curled at the sight of her.

"What are you playing at now, slut?" Mina spat.

Iris satisfied herself by striking her across the face, palm open and nails scratching across her pretty little face enough to leave dark red scratches. "Slut is a filthy word, Mina," she said softly. "But that's not a word for myself that I associated myself with, unlike yourself with the rambunctious activities you prefer to do out of anything else important. Was that enough for you to take your petty jealousy out onto me, an innocent fourteen-year-old girl leaving the library at the same time you and your man-whore and pack were coming my way from a waste?"

"If you don't let go of me -" Mina snarled, struggling again only to be struck again, this time crying as her little mild injuries were stinging her skin. "Dr. Long will punish you for this."

"He won't ever know about this, Mina. If you don't tell him; this is the only means of assuring me that you won't. Today I'll take back what you and your pack ripped from me, and show you who is in control now. You know what they say: karma retribution. Only this is more than just karma, Mina. It is you who is the failure, who will never be truly happy. Your sins always come back and bite you on the ass, as the common say."

The whore's eyes were wide with unbridled horror at the sight of the yellow-gold needle in her hands that soon reached the vulnerable, exposed area of her neck, her screams intoxicating far more than anything beautiful in the world.

~o~

Today

After she was done and donning her robe once more, skin flushed a deep rose, Iris headed for the closet to hang her clothes up. It was there that she caught sight of it in the far corner of the walk-in closet, far beyond the confines of everything else.

Her mother's wedding dress.

Iris had no idea at first as to why it had been kept, but Alice had suggested it, as perhaps she would tie the knot one day. Never in her wildest dreams had Iris ever considered marriage, but lately, she had been plagued with out-of-nowhere daydreams about her standing in a beautiful white dress before her groom in black - her groom being none other than Jonathan. This had taken her by surprise, but it was a great image nevertheless. When she was a teenager - given that teenagers were natural about always thinking about intimacy, but with Iris, it was just a pastime - she used to have her "private moments" about her professor, but after he was fired following the discovery of his experiments on Mina's followers before her birthday, she had stopped as it turned out to be foolish that she would never end up with a man she would never see again - which proved her wrong after their reunion.

She looked upon the billowing dress with a critical eye. The timeless magnificence of lace and crystals was undeniable; in weddings, lace was as age-old a tradition as the institution of marriage itself. Crystals had been added over time to make it more memorable and a dream come true for most brides. With this, traditional had been updated. The Chantilly lace appliquéd bodice was accented with thousands of Swarovski crystals, straps holding the bodice in place, complemented by a traditional ball gown skirt made of organza and more crystals. She imagined Maria receiving praises from the simpering women with flashy dreams of their future wedding days.

Her hair was still wet and hanging down her back from her bath. Leaving the closet, she walked over to her dresser to pick up her intricate silver hairbrush and ran its pure bristles through her locks to smooth them out, staring at her reflection and wondering how to still get Jonathan to talk to her, as she remembered him telling her a long time ago about his college professor after what Mina Rosenberg and her posse did to her...

~o~

Jonathan lay on his back, his eyes tightly shut…until he opened them to brilliant sunlight and the smell of fresh air, even better than an Irish spring. He saw a cloudless blue sky with a perfect golden sun smiling down at him, assuring him that he was free from the evils of the outside world where he was now. He sat up, savoring the pleasure that followed the stretching of his muscles, and looked down and saw he wore an opened white collar shirt and loose black pants, his feet bare. He smiled, not minding at all. But there was one thing missing.

"Jonathan…"

He bolted to his feet, searching his surroundings to find that he was in her backyard garden - the extravagant gardens of DeLaine Manor - but how did he get here? Not that it mattered anyways. He had to find her.

He saw a flash of black before his eyes before it vanished in a split second before he could comprehend what direction it went. But he knew the shortcuts and routes of this place all too well, this living blueprint of thousands of acres of lavish cultivations of nature. Jonathan stood up and bolted down the steps and into the main gardens, the pathway lined with brilliant stoned vases each festooned with their own small fountains and filled with sweetly scented red flowers. He was currently in the parterre, which was in the center and the main focus of the beginning, which merged beautifully with spiraling paths of smooth gravel with decorative emerald grasses and shrubs as the boundaries, added with some Japanese plant life and more of the red flora from the vases behind him. In the middle of this area was a grand gold statue of the love and beauty goddess, Aphrodite.

His feet met the warmth of the smooth white stone ground as his eyes beheld the sight of the infinite one-acre pool with a spraying fountain in the center. The water shimmered a blue unlike any other if even more brilliant than Iris' favorite teal blue. The boat itself sat there at the foot of the mini dock, waiting for him. Since there was no guide to take him across the vast sea, he brought himself over to the edge of the grand pool where a terrace of carved marble stood. Beyond it laid yet another spectacular water garden naturally made on its own.

The veranda overlooked down below to where the sunken gardens rested. Completely unexpected, but a sight you'd be unable to tear your eyes away from. It was the realm of Poseidon, the lord of the sea, but everything from the walls, steps, the grotto, and everything warm mosaic and bronze, and Italian stone. In sunlight, the water glowed a timeless turquoise; out of the light, it was a soft silvery blue; at night, it was dark indigo, particularly under the moonlight.

Jonathan saw the flash of black again, this time vanishing into the forestry off to the right side - but he knew she was heading for their favorite spot in this whole place, right where she was beckoning him to. He took those side stairs and down to where the colonnade stood in all its regality and monumentality. Beyond that and more unexpected than the sunken gardens was the pond in a dark sliver, which shone like a mirror and reflected upon coming closer. Its vastness was an acre larger than the pool now far behind him. Instead of taking a boat this time, he chose to take a walk in Nature's embrace until it took every breath in his body just to get to her. On the side of the pond lay a beautiful stone bridge amidst a stunning forest.

And at the very end of the isolated, naturalistic section of the wilderness lay a glowing white temple gazebo, where the figure in black stood in the center in the very image of Artemis, the goddess of the moon and the hunt, her skirt billowing gently but her back facing him so she was looking out at the rustics. Her long mane of ebony hair flapped gentler than a raven's wing. While he walked along the side of his destination, he took in the statuary baskets of cascading flowers supported by dwarf-sized statues of Artemis herself. Discovering he wasn't out of breath after his long journey - an oddity he didn't care about at the moment, rather focusing on this beautiful creature in the center of the temple - he ascended the three-leveled stairs until he stood at the top and gazed at her. Her arms were covered with long sleeves, the opal shimmering above her bared heart, the long skirt slit at both sides to ease her walks, and her slim curves graced.

"You took your time."

Her voice was low and rich, always nothing like the high squeaks of girls before her. "I couldn't let you get away from me," he purred, inhaling the passionate smell on her skin and the sprightly Moroccan incense in her hair. His hands started at her waist and up, over her front until they found her breasts, caressing and squeezing gently, eliciting moans from her. Oh, he desired her, desired her so bad it hurt. He had wanted her ever since she was thirteen years old when back then it was forbidden and positively likely to end him up with the animals of the city. Slowly, he undressed her from the shoulders down until the black velvet dress pooled around her feet and revealed absolutely nothing under there. Soon, his own clothes were gone so his body was completely bare and against hers now, out in the open to Mother Nature's eyes.

How they ended up on the smooth stone ground beneath, he wasn't sure; all he was aware of was that she was laying beneath him, looking up with glittering eyes full of love and desire, dark and light at the same time that it made him short of breath as their skin touched...

~o~

He expected Edward to wake up as he always did, seeing him sweating and panting, but he was not here. He had broken out again and did a miracle but for what reason? He was trying to get out of here like Jon was, but maybe it was because he wasn't satisfied anymore with waiting for Joan until the working day. His pent-up frustrations sometimes got the best of him.

Now he was alone to his thoughts that Edward had been bothering him about long enough. It was too late to turn back now to denial.

This new dream about Iris...it had shoved aside the one that haunted him long enough. He wanted her here, like in the garden of her home in his vision. He was sick and tired of sleeping alone and with his best friend near him like in college. This wasn't college anymore, and this environment was closing in on him. It wasn't long ago before all of this she would sometimes fix his tie innocently - not so innocent in her eyes and smile - before leaving him to work or at the end of the day. Every time her hand touched his, his skin would burn, his blood burning and his heart pumping faster than it should.

Or, like right now, at night, he would wake up from dreams that had him in this current state he was happy Eddie did not see him in.

The dream sequence further examines the parts of the DeLaine Manor gardens, which is far better than the rest of the house itself, if you ask me. (dreamy sigh) Breathtaking, it's not funny.

Things are about to take a more sinister tone in the next chapter or two, but either way, Iris slowly begins to uncover pieces of the mystery behind her beloved Jonathan's nightmares and his old college professor.